Andrew Cuomo, Chris Christie’s odd-couple friendship

There may come a time when Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo, two supremely ambitious pols and potential rivals in the 2016 presidential cycle, need some distance. But that moment won’t arrive anytime soon.

Instead of jockeying for advantage, the two Northeastern governors — the Republican from blue-state New Jersey and the Democrat from bluer-state New York — have developed an unexpectedly warm working relationship over the past 18 months, marked by occasional dinners and more frequent cell phone contact, aides say. Not coincidentally, both also enjoy approval ratings at the 70-percent level, a novel, post-Hurricane Sandy occurrence for Christie and a nearly two-year constant for Cuomo.

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“I think their relationship has been good since Day One,” said Mike DuHaime, a senior adviser to Christie. “I think they’ve governed in a very similar fashion — both very good governors, very competent, very popular. That doesn’t mean they agree on everything, but there’s been a lot of places of mutual interest.”

It’s not quite a “bromance,” but it comes close. And it’s a geographical and political oddity, given the ambitions both men are believed to harbor for the future — and the test that the relationship could face this year, as Christie campaigns for reelection.

“Both governors have a shared fidelity to pragmatism and have built brands premised on doing the right thing and not the political thing. So it’s easy to understand why they work well together,” said Phil Singer, an adviser to Cuomo’s campaign.

It’s a relationship that’s been on public display since Sandy ravaged their states in late October, and that was brought into sharper focus when Christie and Cuomo issued a joint statement denouncing Congress for slow-walking the Sandy aid package on New Year’s Day.

“When American citizens are in need, we come to their aid. That tradition was abandoned in the House last night,” they said in their statement the following day. “The people of our states can no longer afford to wait while politicians in Washington play games.”

They have governed in fairly similar fashions, a fact that has earned both men the ire of Democrats in their states — a bigger problem for Christie at home than Cuomo, but one that has made New York’s governor a target for liberal critics like MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas.

Indeed, in his first week campaigning in 2010, political observers noted the similarities between Christie, who’d gotten national attention for brawling with the teachers unions, and Cuomo, the New York political scion who talked about “tangling with the public employee unions going forward.”

On the surface, they don’t seem like natural political allies. But they have similar approaches to governing — in addition to their policies on fiscal issues, both keep an extremely tight circle of deeply loyal advisers who closely reflect their bosses’ viewpoints. And both are seen by others in their party as go-it-alone types who could face real tests in a presidential primary.